Rumour 1!Said Remedy’s Aki Järvilehto to a Finnish site on the subject of Alan Wake on PC: “We have received feedback from a lot of PC gamers, and I have to admit that yes, we somehow ignored that. Let’s see if in the near future we could have some positive news to tell you about dating!” (Positive news about dating? You mean she liked me after all?) This seems something of a change of tune.

Rumour 2! Via the same nefarious database-exploring methods as turned up the apparent leak of the latest Humble Bundle contents, we have the below image of the game apparently readying for a Steam release. Rumour! Speculation! Possible Photoshopping! But what the hell – it’d be lovely to have Remedy back, even if Alan reviews were decidedly mixed.

So yeah. Maybe! Possibly. Or not. Who knows? The internet: it’s full of people saying stuff. And if this does turn out to be at all true, will it be the original Alan, or the forthcoming console download title American Nightmare? Or both? Or none? Or a nice cup of tea? Who knows? I don’t. MAYBE YOU DO.

Games are in general overrated and followed by legions of fanboys or hated like the plague. There’s never any middleground. So who cares? Maybe it’s fun for some people, and maybe that someone is me? I didn’t get it for xbox because buying any game for my xbox is a waste of money, I’ll never play it, shows history.

I’ve played it, ’twas very underwhelming experience. A mediocre bore at best. Had been the PC-centric sandbox title that the devs originally envisioned it as, now, that would be something. I’d rather have Deadly Premonition come to PC.

The game is underrated because it is a horror game, but we were promised a lot for that game, not delivering and shelving the PC version for me additionally destroyed the game. On other hand I personally thing that in this state the game is inferior to Alone in the Dark(2008), now that is a really underrated game.

I, for one, found the game to be very enjoyable. The story was very well told and held my attention from start to finish. Besides, if it adds to the possibility that we’ll see more of this work, I’ll gladly purchase a copy on PC.

You all are crazy. Alone in the dark (unless it was different on PC, hopefully?) was the most broken mess of a game I’ve EVER played. I once ramped a car through a large plane of glass. And got stuck. MIDAIR, AS FLYING MONSTERS ATTACKED ME. IN THE PANE OF GLASS.

I also could not finish past the 1/3rd point due to a game-breaking glitch.

Alan Wake however, was pretty good, even if the combat was extremely derivative. Story was cool enough that I pressed through, and I love the ending. I’d play more.

I really doubt they “phoned it in” with a development that protracted, more that they bit off more than they could chew and then had to have Microsoft bail them out and try and hack a sandbox PC game into a level based Xbox game.

Very true, you could clearly tell the game had gone through several revisions over the very long development process with poor direction and Microsoft simply had enough and told Remedy to finish it.

Huge sections of the game have you running from point A to B with nothing happening, all the characters were annoying and unsympathetic, the animation was off putting and the game was filled with pieces of technology left over from when the game was episodic and sandbox in nature.

The combat sections were genuinely fun though and looked great in action too.

It’s just too late to release Alan Wake on PC, does anyone now give a crap about it. I don’t anymore. It was suppose to be release to PC, but the developers backed out of it and went console only. The only way I’ll buy this game if it goes on sale for $5 or less, otherwise I’d be wasting my money. Developers are just tryting to milk this game out for more cash, but it they are going to do it then they need to just make it only download distribution.

What’s up with all the hate here? Was it overrated? Probably, pretty much like everything else? Was it enjoyable. Yes. It really was. Unlike the majority of linear story based action/adventure/shoot games of this generation, the game did manage to hold my attention ’till the end of the game.

The pacing was well done without ever become too frantic or forceful, the story balanced nicely between intense mystery and campy spookiness. The characters also balanced well between slightly douchy but still somewhat likable. Great atmosphere pitch perfect game length didn’t hurt either. It was just a very balanced game.

A lot of people seemed to dislike the story, but I think it really worked when you understood the fact that it was written by Wake himself, who was essentially a slightly arrogant, but celebrated writer of what was ultimately campy tripe.

Microsoft presumably paid for Wake to be a 360 exclusive, but perhaps won’t commit to a sequel so readily. A pc release could be a step to the series going multiformat (at least some work on the pc version was already done, making it an easier prospect that a ps3 port). Meanwhile the XBLA series helps to gauge interest for more Wake on the xbox.

For what its worth I really enjoyed Alan Wake. The combat is solid, though pretty basic. Main draw is the overall style; where Max Payne aped the noir style well, Wake does the same with the Stephen King style of horror writing. At an acceptable pricepoint I’d be tempted to buy a pc version.

Alan Wake was late and getting later, they had to cut something and Microsoft or them (or both) decided that the PC version would be what had to give.

If Microsoft are currently in one of their “OMG PC Games are so important to us” cycles rather than one of their “Bah, PC Games are on their own” cycles (I forget which one we’re on, we’re currently hugely important right? I mean we got Fable III a few months late, so we’re important, or has it switched again?) then we might actually get this.

HermitUK – I’m not sure how Microsoft could have paid for Wake to be a 360 exclusive when they were the publisher, plus the game had spent some considerable time as a PC game, either exclusively or as a PC & 360 release. Microsoft announced that the PC version had been dropped mere months before release, though, which really sucked.

It wouldn’t cost them all that much, in my opinion, for them to finish it off and release it on PC or to at least tweak it for more modern systems.

Well, I can’t find anything about Ms Splosion Man in there right now and since they don’t seem to remove stuff from there (Battlefield 3 beta is still there), I’d say it was just a hoax.
Alan Wake is definitely in there though, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything either, since the Mac versions of the GTA 3 trilogy have been there for at least half a year and it’s till not available.

I was excited about alan wake when they announced it. Having to use a computer only the 1% could afford to actually show its full potential. Now, i get the feeling IF it came to PC, it would be a port job with little extra over the consoles.

My predictions! Remedy releases a year and a half old game on Steam overpriced (say £35), but it sells poorly because lets face it, anyone who was interested has played it by now one way or another. They then blame it on piracy and don’t release for PC again for years.

Who cares?! If so, the game will go on sale on Steam for $5-$10, during which it will all of a sudden be discovered as a forgotten gem and people on the Steam forums suddenly urging their friends to buy it or (like in the case of Alpha Protocol) be gifted with much frenzy to friends and family.

There have been plenty of positive words on message boards for the maligned Force Unleashed 2 today. Because Steam is selling for $5, there are suddenly many posts about how fun it is to throw stormtroopers around.

@Sneetch; I thought the new episode was just bridging from Alan Wake 1 to 2. Was I wrong and episodic is just the way they are taking the series now? :/

@MSJ; It’s all about value for money I suppose. I didn’t think TFU2 was that great, certainly not worth the price at release when you consider it basically reused the same 3 environments and can be completed in under 5 hous, I wouldn’t have recommended it to anyone. But less than £4 for a bit of dicking around with lightsabers and force powers? Yea, that might be worth it.

Oh, I don’t know, I just heard it was going episodic on a random page that I can’t remember I don’t know if that’s official at all or just pure speculation but if anything I’d go with your interpretation as it seems to have actual knowledge behind it rather than mine which is basically what “some guy said”. :)

Oh, and on TFUII so long as I can shout “Unlimited POWER” while force lighting-ing some Jedi I’ll buy it for £4.

Alan Wake had 6 episodes. Then they released 2 additional DLC episodes for ‘bridging the gap to a sequel’. Now it seems like the sequel (ie Season 2) will be released as individual episodes. I would guess this is because they first game wasn’t as popular as they’d hoped and maybe they can make more money by releasing small, teasing pieces of full games (Telltale anyone?).

But, but, but…. How can we get the most compelling experience playing the game on our PCs if we’re not on a couch playing on a TV screen?

I think Remedy burned their bridges with the PC, and I’m glad they won’t have anything to do with Max Payne 3. That way we can actually get it on the PC, in good time, without any half-arsed excuse about it “not suiting the intimacy of the PC”, when in reality they’re just too dumb/greedy/lazy to bother about us.

In this day and age, anyone not willing to buy a couch for their PC is just being obstinate and missing out. It’s ridiculous to demand that every PC developer make an office chair version of their game if it’s really much more suited to the couch.

I agree, it’s the PC gamer’s fault! Lazy PC gamers not sitting on a couch! Sitting six feet back from the screen is obviously better suited to a scary title than sitting closer to a screen because… of the… obvious things! They’re ruining the game – which they all pirated, every last one of them – for others.

I am a man in my 30s with a steady income, and I freely admit I sit on couches. I make no apologies for it. Wherever possible, I try to stand, but sometimes my legs get tired, so I sit. More often than not, its out of a simple lack of energy. If I think a room is particularly deserving of my standing in it, I’ll try to stand in it at a later time.

Sometimes I sit on couches out of principle. If I think a room is too awkward to just stand in, I’ll make a protest and sit down.

Sitting down on couches will always exist, no matter what kind of protections developers put into their games. They need to stop making the fonts smaller just to try and cling to a failing business model of people who are willing to stand up

You do realize that Remedy had the PC version all but done (they even kept the code on their machines!), said they wanted to release the PC version, and it was Microsoft that limited them to the 360, right?

There was actually a PC-version in development at the same time with the 360-version, but becouse Remedy is a small studio they didnt have enough resources to be developing two versions at the same time and becouse Microsoft is their publisher the 360 came first. And before this Remedy did develop Max Paynes only for the PC and Rockstar did the porting.

So basically it was going to be PC, they took the MS money to make it 360 only and proclaimed it would be great etc etc, it didn’t sell that well, now they want to crawl back to PC and (inevitably) go on about how its a long time planned thing and we get extra content and its the best version.

In other words unless its very cheap and comes with all DLC included in the price its gonna be a waste of time!

That comes across as a bit entitled doesn’t it? They certainly don’t owe anyone any allegiance, so if they want to port it over to make a few more bucks I’m all for it. Even if it’ll just be a port, it’s still better than nothing.

I remember seeing the first trailer demonstrating some CPU or GPU on the E3 of 2005 (I believe). It was impressive and the game was supposed to be an epic adventure where you would investigate and puzzel. Sadly it became a console exclusive action game, instead of bullets you used photons though.

Ah, no, not exactly. Alan Wake was going to be a sandbox investigative game, but Remedy discovered that this screwed up the story pacing, so they decided to make it linear (and remember, their comfort zone is games like Max Payne, which is what Alan Wake ended up being) instead. Had nothing to do with consoles, and the 360 was easily capable (notice how many sections of the game take place on HUGE maps?) of doing it as a sandbox game.

Wasn’t Alan Wake originally going to be the game to show off why multi-core processors were the way forward? Then it went exclusive to an ancient toybox due to some excuse about sofas being comfy and monitors being too close up to our faces or some shit.

I wonder who on earth has done the translation. It has no dating involved if I haven’t fallen back on the latest dating lingo. He just clearly states that there has been lots of feed-back from PC gamers and they are tempted to pay some attention to all this feedback. Moreover, he implies that there might be some updates on the status in the foreseeable future that are of positive nature.

I am not entirely sure whether the title has anything much to offer for PC gamers — at least not in the form that it was ported to xbox. If there would be free-form exploration and puzzle solving it might have something going on for it. Maybe as a budget game in 10 – 20 euro range.

It’s a great game. A little too long and repetitive, but it’s one of those games I’m really glad I have completed. And who knows. Remedy are pretty awesome, maybe the PC-version will be even better. With PhysX-support like Batman etc.

Maybe Remedy just realized how big PC sales really are ? Anyway, after the kick in the nuts PC players originally got, unless there’s a vastly improved superior and decently priced PC version coming, you shouldn’t touch it with a long stick (I wouldn’t and I even have national pride here at play). The thing is I feel insulted with the lack of PC version originally. And that insult isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Too fucking bad, because Alan Wake would’ve been a day 1 purchase for sure.

It was Microsoft’s call, not Remedy’s. They had a PC version and were working on it until Microsoft canned it. They then put it on their servers and have been storing it there ever since, waiting to release it on the PC. Don’t hate on Remedy for their publisher’s actions.

Funny, that. I just finished Alan wake on the xbox this weekend. Finished, as in got to a point in the game and said “I’m finished playing this.” Yet another FPS ruined by the likes of STALKER. That or I’m too old for this shit. Interesting story and environment, and all, but too much shoot’n’grind to get to the next point.

Wow. Apparently I suck at communicating on the interwebs, so let me be less cryptic (but no less of an ass).

See, there’s this website I go to, and this guy by the name of Rossignol- perhaps some of you know who I’m talking about – writes this column called “The Sunday Papers”. Anyway, a couple of Sundays ago he asked “Did Bioshock ruin FPS games for you?”, and then he answered “No, that was Stalker.” And I said “Amen, the brother preaches truth”, and read the linked-to article. (He’s smart, he can make links and things. I can’t.)

So this Bonner fellow he linked to says “Yes, Bioshock (no, sir, really it was STALKER) set the bar extremely high and I want, nay I expect, every other FPS to be in the same league. When invariably they aren’t in that same lofty company, I get disappointed and put the game down….”

Now I’m not (too) daft, I know Alan Wake is a third-person shooter, not first-, but dammit, its a shooter, and the principle still holds. I was told that AW was a great game, because it had environment, atmosphere, and made the player feel “constantly under threat”. But the Stalker bar having been set, Alan Wake disappoints, because it relies on the old formula of shoot’n’grind to get to the next bits of story, atmosphere, etc. And developer, if you want me to feel “constantly under threat”, I have to walk around feeling like at any moment some bloodsucker is going to eat me or I’m going to walk into a whirligig anomaly – but NOT have it actually happen all the freaking time! Tension only works when you think something MIGHT get you, not when it’s always there in front of you. When I replayed Call of Pripyat, for instance, and I walked through the Jupiter plant, I crept around every corner prepared to fight the mutant that I remembered was about to jump out at me, except there actually weren’t any – because what I really was remembering was the “constant threat”, the tension of picturing what mutant might be waiting around the corner, when it really wasn’t. With Alan Wake, there’s no threat, no tension, because there always IS something around the corner, and it becomes a predictable grind of “OK, I’m going to step around this clump of trees, and three Taken with axes are going to come after me, and, oh look, there they are, and if I turn around to run, yes, there’s the one that just jumped out of a bush behind me, just like last time…”

So, after a few hours of Alan Wake, I was done. I, too, got disappointed and put the game down, just like that Bonner fellow. he thinks maybe it’s because he’s old (at 40); maybe that’s my problem too (at 35). Or maybe Stalker ruined for me any shooter that’s sold as tense and atmospheric.

Don’t get too excited, everyone, the game’s rubbish. If you’ve ever played Silent Hill or Deadly Premonition, just don’t bother with this because both of those games are similar but infinitely superior in every single way.

Actually just play Deadly Premonition, even if you have no interest in this game. Go on! Right now!

“Of all the games to recommend you’re going to pick Deadly Premonition? The game so bad it’s good? “The Room” of gaming?”

Deadly Premonition is a low-budget game, yes (ported awkwardly from an abandoned PS2 release), but it’s also a very well designed one. A remarkably good Twin Peaks-inspired mystery story and one of the most internally consistent open worlds I’ve seen. You might not have much agency in it, but the characters seem to have real lives outside of your actions, which is a rare thing to see.

We’re talking routines beyond ‘wakes up, goes to job-place, comes back’, but details like a character going to visit a grave on sunday morning, or another couple going drinking late on friday nights and staying until closing time.

You haven’t played it, obviously. It’s not “so bad it’s good”, it’s so good it’s good. Yeah just thinking about the gravel texture will give you a migraine, it’s got some terrible anime cliches that detract from it, and it’s nigh-impossible to go up stairs – but it’s got more heart than any other game I’ve played, and a couple of people including me mentioned it in the “Games that made you cry” thread. I would genuinely place it in my top ten along with Morrowind, PS:T, Grim Fandango etc. Try looking up the Something Awful Let’s Play of it, nobody there was liking it ironically. I bought the game instantly after hearing that first joke before he crashes the car and it surpassed all my expectations.

It does not “go without saying” that Alan Wake, a shoddy repetitive zombie shooter with a pretentious storyline and irritating one-note characters, is better than it at all. And I wasn’t referring to anything after SH3, of course.

Not only was Alan Wake crap, but originally we were told we’d be getting it, we were used to spead word of it during it’s production but then we were denied it just before release.

Alan Wake didn’t sell as much as they thought and it simply wasn’t as good as they said and seeing as the news of a sequel still hasn’t made the splash they would want, they think they can use news of a PC release to pad their numbers.. bullcrap.

I certainly won’t be BUYING it.. Remedy as irrelevent to the PC market.

I HATE it when companies who made their name from the PC gamer turn their back on the very audience that made the console companies take note of them.

Bah, so many people seem to be misinformed. It’s not Remedy’s fault–they have always wanted to make a PC version of the game. It came down to Microsoft–you know, the guys who published the game and make the 360–telling them no. Remedy had been working on a PC version until then and they’ve had it in storage ever since.

What the PC really needs is more fighting games. I had the urge to play one a few days ago and the only options were SF4(I don’t like the Street Fighter series) and Blazblue, which looks great, but the only options to buy it are $35 on GFWL, or $30 on Amazon where the game would be shipped to me in the US from the UK and take two to three weeks to arrive.

I ended up just giving up and going back to my Steam backlog, but I would really love a decent quality fighting game on Steam that’s easy enough to get into and has a good amount of depth.

I was excited about the game until Microsoft paid them to not release a PC version. Now I don’t like the developer and have no intention of buying anything they make. They missed their chance to add me as a customer.

You… hate the developer because of the actions of their publisher, even though it looks like the developer, who has always wanted to release a PC version, is finally getting to do so?

See, me? If I hadn’t bought the game on the 360, I’d be buying it now. I’d be voting with my wallet, hoping to get the PC version to outsell the 360 version so that Microsoft might reconsider not releasing PC versions.

I find it odd that people aren’t excited about this. Alan Wake is one of my favorite games. The combat was superb, utilizing weapons that were appropriate to the area in which the game was played. People are calling it basic or derivative, but, hey, the gold standard that is Half-Life 2 isn’t any more advanced, now, is it? Or does the gravity gun somehow make it special? Because if that’s the case… Alan Wake had flares, flashbangs, and awesome light turrets.

In terms of enemy variety, while they mostly looked the same (there were something like 9 varieties of humanoid, as well as crows, poltergeists, possessed vehicles, etc, as well as environmental hazards like traps and goo), the AI was quite smart and would often attempt to flank or dodge you, and reacted appropriately (both from an animation and action perspective) to whatever situation you created.

In addition, the story rocked–it was a pitch-perfect summation of the psychological thriller genre.

My main complaint was that I didn’t like Alice enough to really care about her, but I did like Alan enough to want to help him out, so it was okay.

One really cool thing I liked about the game was that they took into account the fact that players might want to break it. For instance, in the diner at the beginning of the game, when the old lady gives you the key, if you leave, then go back to see if she’s still there–she’s not. Then Alan actually says “I went back to the hallway, but the old lady had vanished.”

Plus, the game rarely put things in front of you that you couldn’t use. If you saw it, you could get to it. If you thought you could use it, you probably could. The only time I couldn’t use something I wanted to use was during one of the flashbacks to Alan’s apartment–there were pills, and having played Max Payne, I desperately wanted to use them. It wouldn’t let me–until later.

It’s a little unfortunate that they decided not to make it a sandbox title–one advantage the 360 has had over the PS3 is that it can handle open worlds really well (ever notice that Uncharted has a really piddly draw distance, while Gears, Halo, and Alan Wake all have amazing ones?), so it’s not like they couldn’t have done it. I understand that they felt it hurt the pacing to make the game a sandbox title, but at the same time, I REALLY would have liked to explore the world a bit more, you know?

For what it’s worth, Alan Wake was the best game I played in 2010. It wasn’t perfect, but it was damn good, and I like to think my three replays are proof of that.

Why get excited about something that’s unconfirmed rumour? Yeah, it might happen, but it might not. Until something solid happens – and this is Microsoft – until it’s sat on our HDDs, there’s no point getting excited.

It’s more about getting excited about the prospect. There are a TON of people commenting here saying “meh, it sucked/is overrated,” or “the developer didn’t release it on PC initially, so now I hate them even though it’s the publisher’s fault,” and so forth.

I’m surprised that people aren’t saying “Alan Wake might get a PC release? Excellent!” that much. For my part, I’ll be buying a pc copy day one and beating it ASAP.

I’ve heard it’s not great but I’d still like to give it a go. Also yes, it’s perfectly possible, I’m sure Microsoft’s total exclusivity, soul stealing, satanic bind of a contract has worn off by now, so while Remedy are damned, they are also free to see if their game can find a bit more success on the PC and perhaps even PS3.